


"I am..."

by Spooks (Spooksies)



Category: Persona 4
Genre: Fix-It, I don't write fanfic I don't know how to tag this, I just hope this means something to someone, Naoto deserved better, Trans Shirogane Naoto
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:41:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22383499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spooksies/pseuds/Spooks
Summary: Naoto is accused by his shadow of indecision. Naoto discovers he deserves time to think and grow.A rewrite of Naoto's shadow confrontation in which he comes out as trans. The beginning parallels the actual game dialogue closely, but it splits off a lot near the end.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 93





	"I am..."

We arrived to find Naoto calmly facing his own Shadow, dressed identically save for a too big lab coat that fell over his hands and nearly dragged on the ground. Kanji called out to him, and he looked backwards over his shoulder, seemingly unaffected by what he was facing. "Ah, it's about time you arrived. Dealing with this child has been quite a pain." 

At that, he turned fully around and made as if to walk back to our group and leave, but the Shadow reached out after him, talking in a distortedly high pitched voice. "No, no!" He called, "Don't go!"

Naoto, clearly irritated, turned back towards his clone. "It's useless speaking with you. I need to go back now." 

The Shadow's face twisted into a tearful pout. "Why? Why are you leaving me here? Why am I always left alone? Its so lonely... I don't wanna be alone!" His cries turned into sobs, and he brought his hands up to his face to cry into his oversized sleeves. 

"Naoto-kun..." Yukiko couldn't help but interject softly. Everyone was thinking it. Was this really what Naoto was hiding from everyone? 

"You wear the same face as me," Naoto began, attempting to remain unphased by the outburst of his Shadow, "it is as if you are implying we are one and the same. But the difference between you and me is--" 

Before he could explain, his Shadow interrupted him, dropping his hands as well as the act of a crying child. "Why delude yourself? I am you." His voice matured, losing the shrill, childlike quality, and his posture straightened. His face had hardened into the guarded sort of expression one might expect of Naoto, but still warped somehow, in the way so specific to these Shadows. "These childish gestures are no mere affectation, they're the truth!" His hand flew to the side, Shadow speaking with passion and conviction. "The fools all say it, don't they? 'You're only a child', 'Keep out of our business, kid', you've heard it all." The Shadow's eyes narrowed.

"No matter how many cases you solve, no matter how many hours you spend pouring over the files, you're a child in their eyes! It's your brain they're interested in. All that grey matter locked up in that skull. As long as they need it, you're an ace detective! But once you're done it's back to the playpen with you." The Shadow waved his arm dismissively. "You haven't the means to deal with society's two-faced nature. You're just a lonely child." 

Naoto looked down and away, unable to face his Shadow as it continued to speak.

The Shadow, not content to continue the argument in a logical manner, once again took on the persona of a small child. "I wanna be a grown up. I wanna be a big boy right now!" He cried, "Then they'll see who I am." the Shadow cried into his own hands, exaggerating his movements and once again pitching up his voice into a childish whine. "I..." He interrupted his sentence with a sniffle, "I want a reason for me to stay!"

This hit a vein within Naoto. He snapped his head back up and stood up straighter. "That’s enough!" He balled his fist at his side. "I can find my own reason for living."

The Shadow scoffed at this assertion, switching back to his serious tone in an instant. "You are but a child. Nothing you say can change that essential truth."

"Stop it." Naoto demaded, voice low, fist still balled at his side. It was clear the Shadow's words were getting to him. 

But his Shadow did not stop. "You don't have time to be a child. You must live up to your legacy. You idolize the men in the detective fiction novels you're still so fond of. Once you are like them, then people will have to take you seriously! But you can never truly achieve that, can you? In trying to emulate them, you're only proving your childishness. Like a toddler in his dad's work shoes." He brought up his hands as he finished his accusations as if his own too big labcoat proved this fact. Though... in a way, it did. This was Naoto's true self. The person he tried to hide from the rest of the world. 

"Now then..." the Shadow tilted his head forward to lock eyes with his counterpart. Something had shifted in his expression, and Naoto seemed to see this. The Shadow's mouth twitched in what might have been a smile before loudly exclaiming, "Time to start the procedure!" He threw his arms up so the oversized sleeves dropped to expose his hands, each wearing a latex glove. 

"Wait!" The more familiar Naoto exclaimed, nearly taking a step towards the other. Before he got far, he stopped himself and grit his teeth. He shouldn't get so emotional over this.

The other Naoto paused then, cocking his head to the side and letting his arms fall, oversized sleeves falling again over his hands. "Wait?" A too large and crooked smile twisted across his face. "I thought this was what you wanted!" Naoto looked down and away as the other slowly approached him. "What's wrong?" His face morphed again, eyes sparkling and lips pouting as if he could burst into tears again in a moment. "Are you scared?" He talked as if he was speaking to a child. "Maybe you aren't serious about this after all..."

"That's not what I said!" The two were face to face now, barely a meter apart.

"Then why wait?" The Shadow switched away again from his tearful face. He stepped back and spread his arms wide, gesturing to the machinery around him. "The means are available to you! You want to be like the men you idolize in every fashion, correct? So do it! Stop being so childish and indecisive. Take the final step, Naoto Shirogane!"

The Shadow regained that look in its eye where it seemed to tease a piece of information over Naoto's head. Whatever it was, it made him upset. He made a low noise, wanting to combat his Shadow further, but the Shadow spoke over him. "Naoto... such a cool, manly name. How lucky you are for it to have been given to you, when you weren't even born a man."

"Wait, what?" Yosuke interjected, "did he--? Did I hear that right?"

Naoto winced as he remembered that he wasn't alone.

Kanji too, expressed his confusion at the Shadow's words. "H-He's not a guy?"

"That's not what it meant." Naoto shot quicky over his shoulder before turning back to address his Shadow. "I won't throw a tantrum, even if I have just been outed by someone wearing my own face. It will accomplish nothing." 

The Shadow laughed softly. "That's what they all say, isn't it? Throwing a tantrum won't solve anything. And here you are saying those exact same things to yourself. That's a little hypocritical, don't you think?"

Naoto let out a sound of frustration as his Shadow laid out all his insecurities on the table.

Still, the Shadow continued. "They made you cry, and blamed your naivety. And yet you still want to be one of them! No worries, I understand..." it walked past Naoto, coming to a halt in front of one of the operating machines. "I can help you." The shadow turned back to him, getting louder and louder until it reached a booming crescendo. "That is what this procedure is for: to give you the body you know you were meant to have!" 

As his Shadow loomed, Naoto had taken a step backwards. Uncertainty and fear was written on his face. 

"What's the matter?" The Shadow continued to boom. "Why are you still so indecisive? If this is what you want, then choose! If you aren't a scared little child then act like it! You cannot truly be a man if your body--"

"STOP IT!" Naoto yelled over the Shadow's words, clutching at his head. "I can't listen to this anymore!"

"Why can't you? You know it just as I do, I am you!"

"That's not true!" Naoto was desperate to stay composed, but attacked with every insecurity as he was, it took everything he had not to fall to his knees. 

"Don't say it!" Chie called, nearly reaching out to run to him, but Kanji stuck out his arm to stop her. 

"Let them talk it out, yeah? Else Naoto's just gonna keep hurting. And when the time comes, we'll kick that Shadow's ass!”

For the first time, Naoto’s Shadow turned to face the rest of us. “Fine, if that’s what you want. Kick my ass, huh? I’d like to see you try, you lizard-brained imbecile!” 

There was a small chorus of reassurances and people bracing themselves, and then the fight began.

  


\- ~ -

  


After the battle, Naoto lay open on the ground, breathing shallow. 

“So… what was all that about Naoto-kun?” Chie asked, squatting down to watch Naoto for signs of waking up. As she did, Naoto winced and made a noise, struggling to bring himself to the waking world. 

“Are you awake?” Yukiko joined her best friend in kneeling on Naoto’s opposite side. 

Naoto brought a hand to his head, sitting up with some struggle. He squinted, looking around the room at all of us, Chie and Yukiko still by his sides. “Where am I? I remember you all arriving, and…” He trailed off, the grogginess clearing from his voice as he remembered more and more of what happened. He looked away. “That’s right, you saw… all of that.” At this point, he looked back up to his Shadow and rose to his feet to confront it. The girls rose with him, watching as he passed them to stand face to face with his Shadow. 

He stood there for a long moment, looking into eyes that were not his and bracing himself for what he needed to say. He started someplace unexpected. “I lost both of my parents in an accident,” he began slowly, never losing eye contact with his Shadow. “I was still young, so my grandfather took me in. I was inept at making friends, so I spent most of my time reading detective novels in my grandfather’s study.

The Shadow spoke again in that strange, distorted voice, but his face had softened somewhat, meeting Naoto’s gaze. “When I grow up, I want to be a strong, awesome detective.”

Naoto continued as if his Shadow hadn’t spoken. “My parents were proud of their job. I had no qualms about following in their footsteps. An inherited occupation can feel stifling to many, but I welcomed it. I yearned for the day I could be a detective myself… Perhaps I inherited that desire from them as well.” He smiled fondly at the memory of his parents. “Seeing this, my grandfather felt it was his duty to aid me in achieving my dream. I secretly aided him with his clients; it wasn’t long before people started calling me a junior detective. At first, I was delighted, but not everything was to go so smoothly.”

“Everything your Shadow said about you being a child?” Yukiko prompted.

“Yes. Not everyone took well to someone as young as I collaborating on cases with adults. I suppose that problem will go away with time, but I didn’t want to wait. I was a curiosity. Favorite of the media, but an annoyance to my peers—though they would never consider themselves as much to me. So I had to be an adult, act like an adult. I had no room for childish hobbies or delusions or even…” He trailed off, for a brief moment looking out at us almost sheepishly. “Or even making friends my age.” 

“Yet no matter what I did, I still felt as if I was ignored for the unchangeable fact of my age. When I brought up valid complaints, I was dismissed as throwing a tantrum. But I don’t need their approval to know who I am.” For the first time, Naoto seemed confident in his words, finally understanding that the only way he could grow was to accept the fact of his age.

The moment was broken by Yosuke asking the question that was, at the very least, still nagging at my own mind. “So… what was it that your Shadow said you about not being a boy?” Naoto once again winced at the question. 

“My Shadow accused me of indecision,” he began, choosing his words carefully, “Of not fully knowing who I am and the choices I want to make.” He sighed, closing his eyes slightly as he struggled to find the correct words. “I was not… born as a male, though I never felt like a woman, even in childhood. In time, it became clear the reason I idolised the male heroes of detective fiction is because I wanted to be like them.” He turned back to ask his Shadow directly: “But can I ever truly be a man if my body is a woman’s?”

“I wish I was born a man…” Naoto’s Shadow interjected sadly, still speaking with the distorted, childlike voice. 

“It does not make me a coward to be uncertain of the decisions I want to make with my body. I am a child, after all,” he admitted, “Perhaps I should let myself be one. I do not have to know all the answers immediately when I have the time to come to them. I do not need to change my body to be who I am. I need to accept myself for who I am, as I am.” Naoto straightened, confidence finding its way back into his voice. “I am a child, and a man. Neither of these things I can change. I am also a detective, and no one can take that away from me.” 

“That’s an awful lot to take in…” Yosuke scratched at his head as he attempted to wrap his head around Naoto’s words. 

“So you don’t want us to change how we think of you, yeah?” Kanji leaned forwards into his question, full attention on Naoto.

“Please do not.” He turned to face his Shadow a final time. “I’m sorry. I hid all of my uncertainties inside of me. I felt that if I showed them, I would be treated even more as a child. But all of them are a part of me, just as you are. You are me… and I am you. It’s time for me to accept that.” 

His Shadow nodded, closed its eyes, and faded away. In its place was Naoto’s own Persona, the manifestation of the strength of his heart. As it became a part of him, all the breath in Naoto’s lungs left him in a euphoric rush as he was filled with power. The shock of it sent him momentarily to his knees. 

As we all rushed over to make sure he was okay, he laughed softly at the shock of it all. “No wonder the perpetrator has eluded the police. But it's apparent now—this case is far from over.”

“That's right… And you proved it, Naoto” Yosuke offered. “Anyways, we can talk more later. We need to get you out of here.”

Naoto nodded and tried to push his way to his feet, but winced, struggling to find the strength to do so. Kanji offered him his hand, which Naoto hesitantly accepted, using it as a support. Kanji then wrapped an arm around him, letting Naoto lean on him as we made our way towards the exit.

“Damn,” I heard Kanji mumble to Naoto as we left, “You gotta be careful, you could have gotten hurt! We were all worried about you…”

Eventually, all of us found our way back to the the electronics department at Junes, some questions answered, but more questions opened.


End file.
